BlackBerry Playbooks in Police Cars

Here is an interesting article regarding a company outfitting police cars with the BlackBerry Playbook.

The idea is interesting as a majority of police forces currently use BlackBerry devices due to the fact that they are the only devices that are FIPS 140-2 compliant out of the box. With Bridge and software made to query police information systems, it’s a no-brainer for the idea to implement the Playbook in the police environment.

However, as an experienced IT professional in law enforcement, I have also seen the working environment within a police car, as well as personally observed the abuse that the current mobile data terminals (MDTs) receive in the field (We currently use Panasonic Toughbooks and they still come back with screens broken from finger pressing or accidental bumps). Just considering those two factors, in my opinion the current iteration of the Playbook is not suitable for such a deployment as the screen is too small and the device is too fragile to withstand any long-term deployments.